Lifetime's new scripted dramedy UnREAL imagines the manipulation and racism happening behind the scenes on a Bachelor-esque reality show. How much of it is true?

Lifetime's UnREAL, which you must start watching if you haven't already, is a behind-the-scenes scripted dramedy about Everlasting, a Bachelor-esque reality show. Co-created by ex-Bachelor producer Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, the series unflinchingly explores every aspect of reality dating shows, from the manipulations of the production team to the exploitation of less-than-mentally-stable women to the troubling lack of contestants of color.

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Leslie Hughes knows about all of this firsthand. She sought Sean Lowe's heart in 2013, on season 17 of The Bachelor, making her one of only a handful of non-white women to ever appear in the franchise. Cosmopolitan.com spoke to Leslie about what she thinks of UnREAL (yes, she's a fan), her experience on The Bachelor, and why she's not optimistic about the future of diversity on the show.

One of the reasons UnREAL has sucked me in the way it has is I haven't necessarily been into this season of The Bachelor. Yeah, I've heard that a lot. Some of the guys seem like they're really tacky.

It seems like this group of guys is maybe more interested in being on Bachelor in Paradise than in Kaitlyn. For sure. And now I just saw the [Bachelor in Paradise cast] list, and, yeah, pretty much half the guys are from her season. I've been trying to get on [Bachelor in Paradise] and get a hold of producers and no one has returned my phone calls or emails. But I'm looking at the list and, like, seriously, there's one black person. One dude, from Kaitlyn's season.

Were you familiar with The Bachelor before you went on your season? Oh, yeah, I'd watched since the beginning. And I'd watched when Sean was on Emily's season, and he was the only one I wanted to date. He had all the qualities and values I wanted in a husband. During casting, when they asked me who I wanted it to be, he was who I said. So going in, I was happy, especially because he's exactly who he seems like he'd be on TV, but more. They don't really show his goofy or fun side. That's editing for you.

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What of the most compelling things about UnREAL to me is that it exposes how manipulative the editing can be. Were you conscious of that going into your season? I was, and there are lawyers I talked to. I act and I model, and the lawyers made it really clear that this could potentially hurt my career and what I was planning to do with my life. I was encouraged to think long and hard, because it's reality TV. You don't know what's going to happen. But I truly knew who I was, and I felt like if they wanted to turn me into some kind of villain, they'd have to work really hard. If someone really is there for the right reasons — that's stupid terminology, sorry — you can't play them out to be a bad person.

There's a scene in UnREAL where one of the producers tells the two black contestants that if they want to have a shot at staying on the show, they need to act out. One woman does, the other refuses to. Did you feel any pressure to act or be a certain way when you were on the show? No, honestly. I had a life coach at the time and I would talk to her about these things before I went on. And here's the thing: TheBachelor's very big on drinking. When I went for my final interview, it was 10 or 11 a.m., and the producers were like, "Want something to drink?!" Beer, champagne, hard liquor, basically whatever I wanted, it was available. So coming out of that, I already knew that this was going to be a thing — they're going to want you to drink, because that's when they get the juicy stuff out of you. Before going in, I wrote to myself, promising I'd only have one drink a day, and I'd make it at the rose ceremony. I didn't want my feelings to be messed with over alcohol. I was there to find a match. And to be clear, I loved it. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

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But it's so emotional. People watch and ask why the girls are crying all the time, but we only get to talk to one person of the opposite sex, and he has all the values and the qualities that we want. With all these heightened experiences, you're going to fall in love with the person. I'm sorry. You can't talk those emotions out with family and friends, so you talk with producers.

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So if the producers are your only friends in that situation but they're also there to do a specific job, what were those interactions like? It's a lot like it is on UnREAL. Production already knows everything about you, which I didn't really think about until after the process. My producers were amazing and I love all of them … but I think that's because they already knew everything about me. For me, it was therapeutic to go talk to them. But at the same time, they're being your friend, but they're also being manipulative. They want to get that stuff out of you. They want you to cry. And now there are some I'm still friends with and others I just don't hear from anymore. Which is kind of sad, but it reminds you they were just doing a job. But I didn't think about that at all at the time. You become way more aware of that when you watch the TV show.

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So, being familiar with the show, you had to be familiar with the diversity problem. Yes — and when I got chosen, that was right after they'd had that lawsuit. So I called my dad — my dad's black and my mom's white — and was like, "Oh my god! I'm going to be on the show! There's not a lot of black people in that franchise!" And then when I got there, there were six or seven of us the first night and I thought, Whoa. It's like they've stocked up. But now it's gotten slimmer or slimmer. There's like two or three [minorities] each season.

I don't know if they try to be racist, or if … like, honestly, I don't understand it. Even daytime TV, primetime TV, there's more ethnicities represented, more multi-racial couples. Why would they not want it on The Bachelor? And on Sean's season, he asked for that. He wanted a diverse cast, and the producers pick by what the lead wants. So maybe the Bachelors and the Bachelorettes they're picking want a mostly white cast. But the show's been on for so many years — why not bring in a mixed race headliner? Why not bring in a black lead? There are so many ethnicities to pick from, and there's been one? Really?

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Kaitlyn has a black man on her cast that brought that up to her right away — he had a couple of drinks and then confronted her, asking whether he was a token. Do you think there was some truth or validity to that? There's definitely truth in asking that. You see every season that there isn't much diversity and then suddenly Sean's season there was a bunch, and then it went down again. And no one who's black or mixed race or any other ethnicity makes it past week four or five [which is joked about on UnREAL]. I mean, Catherine's mixed race, and she and Sean are married now. So again, I think it has to be the people that they're choosing as headliners. But for Bachelor in Paradise, there's no lead. It's the producers making all the decisions, and they're putting together these casts that are almost exclusively white. Especially with the way America's going, why would you not want to be an example of something more inclusive? They're always looking for something new. To [pit] two girls against each other — that's just wrong. But they did it for drama, they did it for ratings. So why not bring in something that they've never had before?

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